


Storm King's Thunder: Absolutes

by valamerys



Series: Storm King's Thunder campaign fic [7]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: (the only way marin and kitro communicate), Gen, Menzoberranzan, Tense quasiargument conversations, backstory empathizing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:54:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23094406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valamerys/pseuds/valamerys
Summary: Kitro is wildly unpleasant, and Marin ends up confiding in him anyway.
Series: Storm King's Thunder campaign fic [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1659832
Kudos: 6





	Storm King's Thunder: Absolutes

**Author's Note:**

> In exchange for help navigating the Underdark to resolve Rekhien's debt to a Beholder, Marin rescued Kitro's drow ass from prison AND agreed to help him deliver the rest of his house to the surface. He's distinctly ungrateful about it. It doesn't help that he briefly mistook her for his goddess.

In a room beneath the city of spiders, Marin nurses her serving of drow wine. It’s purplish and mild— far sweeter than she’d have expected, in this place where everything seems to be made of death and hate and spiny things. 

_ “Drink,”  _ Kitro had said, extending the stone goblet towards her.

The scenario was too reminiscent of Dryland poisoning them for comfort. Marin cringed. _ “I’ll pass, thanks.” _

Kitro didn’t move, just arched a dark brow at her.  _ “It’s likely to be the last drink you ever have.” _

She sips it slowly, and the warmth it kindles in her chest makes the cavelike cold that presses in around them a little more bearable. 

Rekhien wanders the length of the room and inspects the drow weapons mounted on the wall. Theseus sits near the door, eyes closed, lips moving almost imperceptibly; Marin imagines he’s praying. At the far end of the space, Phyn showers affection on Lulu, who wiggles and pants happily, unfazed by the chill otherness that permeates the air.

Kitro sits at the long table, a dozen paces from Marin’s seat, holding his own goblet. His spellbook lies open before him, his slender gray fingers splayed over the pages, but he doesn’t seem to be reading it, his brow furrowed and his attention on the fire. It’s been something like a week now, and Marin can’t decide how she feels about him. She didn’t really think he had poisoned the wine, but that’s more because he’s had plenty of opportunities to kill them already than anything like  _ trust _ .

Marin rises and comes to stand next to him, props a hip against the massive wooden table. He gives no indication of noticing her presence, so she takes another swallow of wine and wets her lips. 

“Where will you try to settle your people,” She asks quietly, “When you all make it to the surface?” 

The question is unkind. Marin is sure he doesn’t have a real answer. She doesn’t know why she feels the urge to needle him, only that it feels better than just sitting here.

“I was hoping the Dark Maiden would show me, when I made it there.” He casts a glance sidelong in her direction. The blue firelight plays on the angular planes of his face, in the hollows of his cheeks. “Instead, there was… you.”

The word twists with distaste. He’s expressed his annoyance at mistaking her for a goddess enough times that she’s pretty sure some of his antagonism is misplaced embarrassment about it. 

But the man just admitted to watching half of his family be slaughtered, she reminds herself. Perhaps she should try to be nicer. 

“She still could,” Marin offers, and ignores the jab. “When we kill Ulvith and make it back out of the city.”

Kitro lets out a disbelieving huff. “You speak in such absolutes.  _ When _ we get to the surface.  _ When _ we kill Ulvith. Do you still not realize how likely you are to die down here? And let us be clear,  _ he— _ ” he jerks his chin at Rekhien, far enough away not to hear them over the magical hiss of the fire— “Most certainly will.”

Marin bristles. “I know how much danger we’re in. You’ve made it very clear— ”

“Evidently not,” Kitro says into his cup.

“— But I have to believe we’ll win. Or what’s the point?”

Kitro turns to face her, now, and simply stares. His pale gaze is unnerving, eyes an arcane white-blue, the color of ice gilded with frost. Or her lightning. 

Marin has to look away, heat rising to her cheeks. “You believed in your goddess enough to get to the surface, didn’t you? Even against all reason?”

He exhales, and pushes his free hand back through his hair roughly. “It’s nothing so ephemeral as  _ belief _ . There’s a feeling, a pull. My people and I are  _ meant _ to see the surface, it’s—” Kitro’s voice frays, and for a moment something like emotion roughens his accent. “It feels like a loved one. Leading you by the hand.”

The words steal the breath from Marin’s lungs. The ghost of her memory surfaces unbidden: the echo of screams, a frigid cold off the ocean. A man’s hand enveloping her child one, the same shade of blue, pulling,  _ leading _ .

“I’m sorry,” Marin’s throat is suddenly thick. “That you didn’t get to meet her. I really am.”

His mouth draws into a hard line. “As am I.”

Kitro is— abrasive, dismissive, pessimistic. And  _ rude _ . And he could have killed Rekhien last night, and it’s not likely he’d have been sorry about it. He might still turn them over to  Ulvith , or whoever else in this horrible city would want them dead.

But Marin understands what it is to be called. To travel so, so far at the behest of a god you barely understand, and then not find the answers you were looking for. To find another journey ahead of you, instead.

“I have a people of my own,” she says softly, after a moment. 

She feels his attention refocus on her, sharp and heavy, but she clutches her cup and keeps her gaze trained on the wall. “And they’re trapped, too. Far away from here.”

Thoughts of her vision, of the Purple Rocks, cling to her like spiderwebs. The men and women with horns like hers, frozen sculptures of terror and pain— she’d been prepared for so much, but not for that. Not for what it  _ meant _ .

A slaughtered race can only be grieved. But petrified people can be cured. 

She knows that as well as anyone, now. But even before Marin learned the sensation of her limbs growing cold and heavy, the taste of stone filling her throat like chalky bile, the intent to return and wake her people has churned in her stomach since her final Blessing. Actually doing it, though— navigating that storm again, painstakingly restoring and healing her kin one by one, explaining to each of them it’s been fifteen years, and there is so little of their lives left— will take a small army of healers and a faith bordering on insanity.

So she’s never spoken it aloud before. Not to Phyn, who would understand more than anyone; not to Theseus, who would solemnly offer his help. Not to Rekhien, who she tells everything.

But Kitro knows none of that.

After a moment, she meets Kitro’s eyes, and wills her voice steady. “I believe I’ll live to free them just as much as I believe we’ll get your House to the surface.”

She has a choice, of course. She could try to burn the empty spaces in her history from the ledger, and pretend her new life is enough. She could let the Purple Rocks become a salt-crusted ruin inhabited by statues and try to forget that perhaps some of them cared for her, once. But like so many other choices she’s made lately, it doesn’t feel like one. 

Except for a mad old man, she seems to be the last of her kind. There is no one else to do it.

Something flickers across Kitro’s expression, too subtle and too quick for Marin to interpret. Perhaps it’s a trick of the dim bluish light, but the set of his mouth seems softer, now. After a moment, he raises his glass to hers.

“To our people, then,” He murmurs, and his accent is soft and lilting.

Carefully, she taps her glass to his. 

“To our people.”


End file.
